SOCAR President sues PNIA leader for slander

SOCAR President Natiq Aliyev issued a statement Thursday following the allegation by the PNIA chairman Etibar Mammadov in a news conference on August 15, where the politician said the company allegedly embezzles and sells 1.5 million tons of crude through Iran each year.

Mr. Aliyev described the utterance, which has gained tremendous publicity in media, as humbug, slander and personal insult. He said he had been SOCAR president for 8 years.

He went on to say that SOCAR stopped exporting crude to Iran in 1993. According to him, the first crude was exported on September 25, 1997 through the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline under the agreement between the Azeri and Russian governments. 60,200 tons of crude oil was exported in 1997, 686,400 tons in 1998, 625,700 in 1999, and 284,500 in 2000. The figure for 2001 is so far 1,365,000. A total of 2,972,133,424 kg of crude has been exported in the past four years, with $412,579,101 earned.

Besides SOCAR-exported oil, Azerbaijan exports its AIOC crude share, 1,512,000 tons to date, through the Baku-Supsa pipeline, fetching $294,400,000 to the Oil Development Fund. The Fund currently contains $433,048,280.

N. Aliyev demanded that the PNIA chairman be held accountable for what he believes is slander.